Astrum Ortus
by Saesama
Summary: The king is dead, and a new star rises to take his place. Contains slight violence and character death.


Has a slight tie-in with Glances Into a Spark - Coronation and Two Roads, but is more a Glances AU than anything. Anyone that wants to is more than free to take this idea and run with it.

o o o

They had not been built for this.

Megatron had destroyed the lifeless shells of the mechs who would have been Lord High Protector and Prime, and it was thought that without Megatron at the ceremony, the twin heirs could not be sparked. The Council, however, was wrong in that regard, and the very next mech sparked at the Allspark had been sparked double. The extra spark had been transferred to another body and debate had raged over whether or not they were the Heirs.

Optimus had never questioned their lineage. He had taken them both and hidden them away, shielding them from Megatron's knowledge and Megatron's wrath.

He hadn't hidden them from themselves, however. Training was conducted, in utmost secret, attempting to pass on in snatched bytes what Optimus and Megatron had learned in vorns on end. They accepted their heritage mutely and as soon as they could, they had broken free of their caretakers and gone to ground, lost.

When a pair of twin gladiators surfaced in Lockdown's fighting rings, no one had connected them to the missing Heirs. They were brutal killers, fierce and cold, and not until Optimus Prime had a chance to meet them himself did he realize. He kept the knowledge quiet for long millenia, not sharing with even the most trusted of his advisers and friends, until both were finally on Earth in the late twenty-first century.

o o o

Optimus Prime shuttered his optics for a long moment, listening to the hum and thrum of the sparks around him. One in particular called out to him, across a link that could never be broken, and his spark keened anew for his wayward twin. "You understand," he asked quietly. "What is being asked of you?"

"'One cannot die while the other lives'," the Prime Heir quoted, a sneer under his words that Optimus had never known a priest to carry. "We know what to do, Prime. If you think I'm not going to be able to go through with it-"

"Not that," Optimus interrupted. "And you know it."

The arrogance fell to stony determination, and the Protector Heir nodded once. "We know," he said simply, for once not inclined to prideful boasting. "We do it, or we die, simple as that."

Optimus nodded, looking out over the growing battle, optics drawn unerringly to the mech who shared his spark. "Now is the last time you can back out," he said. "If you have any doubts in your abilities, in what I have taught you-"

"If we haven't learned it by now, we're not going to," Sunstreaker said flatly. He gave Optimus a long, calculating look. "If you don't want to die, just say so, Prime."

"No one would judge you for it," Sideswipe added.

No, no that wasn't it, and he smiled behind his battle mask. "I only fear that I have not armed you well enough for the future vorns," he replied, heavy regret weighing his voice.

"We're as armed as we're going to get," Sideswipe stated. "If it doesn't work, oh well. We tried. But just sitting here isn't going to stop Megatron. We gonna do this?"

Optimus paused anyway. Their people were dead-locked into a war that would never have a winner, forcing changes on the once-peaceful anthropologists, and Optimus knew that he and his brother suffered a filtering effect due to their positions. Any individual mech was not a puzzle, but he was separated from the masses by authority and class, and the strange culture of war-time Cybertron was not fully understood by the upper command of either faction.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, however, had been immersed since the day they were sparked. They had seen every angle of the war; from Optimus Prime's carefully guarded pupils, to Megatron's most prized fighting pets. From wise-cracking entertainers, to deadly assassins. From front-line grunts in both factions, to hardened strategists heading their own units. They understood the changes in their race, had been shaped and tempered by the eddies within their society. Possibly alone among the entirety of the remainder of their people, the Heirs had experienced enough to actually unite their kind again.

Megatron was wheeling towards them, and Optimus met his brother's optics across the space between them. "Let's do this."

o o o

Megatron banked low over the skirmish, his engines screaming. It was a trick, a damned _trick_ to lure him out, and ahead he could see the bait. Optimus on a low hill, alone except for that little black warrior of his, watching him with those damned sad optics. Megatron grinned viciously. He'd kill the black brat and take his brother prisoner, locking him away in his own quarters for the rest of eternity while the Decepticon cause spread across the universe-

Weight on his back, blades slicing through metal plating with sickening ease and his spark stuttered when one of his main energon lines was cut. "How's it going, old man?" sneered the mech riding him to the ground. "I think it's time for you to retire." Megatron transformed, heard the flare of small boosters as the mech jumped off, and he hit the rocky slope of the hill with a echoing thud. The mech landed on him, some tiny wheeled fighter with jet boosters in his shoulders and blades that arrowed through Megatron's chest, slicing another energon line. Pinned. He was pinned and he didn't know why the term was echoing through his processors like that.

Megatron twisted around. Optimus and the black were chest to chest, spark to spark, shaking and clinging to each other, and Megatron realized, far too late, what this all was. He slapped off the silver mech and staggered to his feet, pounding up the hill. Any other mech would be dying, but while one lived, the other couldn't die, and his spark was already healing itself, pulling back together to keep him alive as long as Optimus lived, and he wouldn't let this happen, he wouldn't, wouldn't wouldn't-

The pair separated, and Megatron could see the gold tracery on the wrong mech's spark chamber, what they had thought was the Matrix and had turned out to be a gift from the ancient Primes. Optimus smiled down at him, his chest still too open, and the black shoved deadly claws into the not-Prime's chest to tear out his spark.

Megatron stumbled, fell, caught his brother about the waist and they fell back down the hill together. Optimus was dead in his arms, dead and gone, and Megatron keened with fury and grief and desperation, his own spark making interesting rippling motions as it tried to pull Optimus back from the Well by will alone. "I won't end like this!" he roared, though all he heard was a weak rasp from damaged vocal connections.

A wheeled foot planted in his back, shoving him forward. "Yeah, you will," came a cold voice, before twinned blades shoved through his primary back strut, piercing his spark chamber.

o o o

It wasn't right, Ironhide thought. It wasn't right, it wasn't _fair_ that in order to kill Megatron, Optimus had to die, and part of him hated Optimus for never telling them. He shook off the hate and made his way cautiously around the hill - him and every other mech, Autobot and Decepticon alike, carefully edging around the outcrop to see what the final outcome was.

Megatron kneeled on the ground, bent over a too-familiar red-blue form in his lap, and Ironhide's spark wrenched at the sight of Optimus Prime with his spark ripped out. Dwarfed by the greatest two mechs to have ever led Cybertron, the young twins stood in a cold silence, optics ticking between the faces of those around them. Haughty arrogance had given way to icy authority, and Ironhide wondered for the thousandth time if they would have been better off transferring Megatron's spark to a drone's body and just keeping him locked up for the rest of time.

Surely, that would have been better than letting the Autobot's most famed killers take the lead of their race.

o o o

Starscream shrieked in rage when he saw what had happened. Megatron and Optimus Prime, dead at the hands of, not each other, but a pair of useless, worthless pit-fighters. And the two had the nerve, the utter gall to claim Cybertron's throne in the process!

The Air Commander banked away from the battle, calling a Decepticon retreat. Not all would follow, he knew; many Decepticons were loyal to the Lord High Protector, not the Decepticon cause, and they would follow this mech pretending at the position. No matter. They would die when Starscream regrouped his armies -_his_ armies now- and brought them back to smash the little pretenders and their kind. The Autobots were as good as done for with Optimus Prime gone. It was only a matter of time.

o o o

Ratchet had been sparked into tradition and ceremony. He hadn't been alive when Optimus Prime and Megatron ascended the twin throne, but he had viewed the Challenges of dozens of Prime/Protector pairs, and he had long steeped in the intricacies of the matters of state.

Tradition stated that the ruling pair be large, grand, awe-inspiring. These two mechs were small, compact, good-looking but nothing inspiring at first glance. The Prime was to be brilliant; multi-hued armor to contrast with the silver-black of the Lord High Protector. These two were dull - charcoal and slate, drained of color and contrast except for the Earth-designed tail-lights in their chests.

The Prime was to be kind, compassionate, wise. Sunstreaker was arrogant, snide, temperamental.

The Lord High Protector was to be firm, commanding, steadfast. Sideswipe was conniving, cocky, a prankster.

The rule was supposed to be passed along in a solemn, structured ceremony that involved intonements, not ripping out their Sire's sparks.

Everything Ratchet had ever learned about the rule of their kind was made a mockery, torn apart and discarded in favor of a death-fueled parody on a battleground. What kind of future did their race have, when this is what would set the tone for the warrior-twin's rule?

o o o

Fireshot landed carefully, hunkering into his own armor to appear as non-threatening as possible. Not many Decepticons had been paying attention to the faction leaders, but Fireshot had seen it all, beginning to end. His oaths had been sworn to the Lord High Protector long before the war had ever been dreamed, and if this little gray Autobot was now the Lord High Protector, so be it.

An Autobot whirled on him, a shoulder-mounted gun at the ready and drawing a deadly bead. "What do you want?" the Autobot demanded, and Fireshot trembled to not lash out in defense.

"I serve the Lord High Protector," he said instead, bowing for lack of anything better to do with himself. He looked beyond the Autobot, to the too-small Lord High Protector. "In whatever form he takes."

"Let him stay." Old Ironhide, and Primus, _that_ was a surprise. The Autobot frowned, turned to argue, and Ironhide shook his head. "The rules are changing," he said, and the look he gave Fireshot was mistrustful and not a little hostile, but grudgingly accepting. "Don't take your sight off him, but let him stay."

o o o

Power.

Power like nothing else.

It hummed in their circuits, sang in their processors, skirled through their memory banks with a screaming, glorious feeling of Yes, of Purpose, of _Right_. This was what they had been sparked for, their destiny, and the long denial of their rightful place only made the victory sweeter.

Avatar of Primus, descendant of the Dynasty. _Solaris Prime_.

Lord High Protector of Cybertron, guardian of their race. _Sidiatron_.

Slag the war. Slag factions, loyalties, and old grudges. Slag the doubters, the questioners, the ones already screaming for their energon. They would start over, wipe the slate clean, and rebuild their world from the scrap metal remnants of the war. A new planet, a new law, a new life for the scattered Cybertronians and if morons like Starscream wanted to start things, it would be made clear that it was on _his_ spark. They had better things to worry about.

Megatron and Optimus would be left here, a ruined monument on the dusty gray ball of Earth's satellite, a testament to the ravages of war, and a reminder to all that they had died as they should have lived; together. Casting one last look up into the proud, ruined faces of their Sires, Solaris Prime and Sidiatron stepped forward to address their people.


End file.
